"'The curate of the village sent those who should bring home the
body; and some days afterward he came unto me, beseeching me to
write the epitaph. Being no friend to stonecutters' charges, I
entered not into biography, but wrote these few words:-
JOANNES WELLERBY,
LITERARUM QUAESIVIT GLORIAM,
VIDET DEI.'"
"Poor tack! poor tack!" sourly quoth Master Silas. "If your wise
doctor could say nothing more about the fool, who died like a rotten
sheep among the darnels, his Latin might have held out for the
father, and might have told people he was as cool as a cucumber at
home, and as hot as pepper in battle. Could he not find room enough
on the whinstone, to tell the folks of the village how he played the
devil among the dons, burning their fingers when they would put
thumbscrews upon us, punching them in the weasand as a blacksmith
punches a horse-shoe, and throwing them overboard like bilgewater?
"Has Oxford lost all her Latin? Here is no capitani filius; no more
mention of family than a Welchman would have allowed him; no hic
jacet; and, worse than all, the devil a tittle of spe redemptionis,
or anno Domini."
"Willy!" quoth Sir Thomas, "I shrewdly do suspect there was more,
and that thou hast forgotten it.
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